Friday, February 5, 2010

promo progolomo

A really nice and (naturally) hilarious writeup about strange book promos in general and "Song of the Great Kataklysm" in particular, from Andrew Beaujon at Washington City Paper. Lots of great quotes from John Wray and Bethanne Patrick.Starts like this:

Some people record six-minute-long prog-rock epics because they want to infuse Gilgamesh with the power of electric guitars. And others do it because their novel has just come out in paperback.

When my friend Jeffrey Rotter entered a Brooklyn studio to record a song about his debut novel, The Unknown Knowns, it was for the latter reason. “I think authors are just looking for any way they can to get attention,” Rotter says. Rotter, says Obits guitarist Sohrab Habibion, “was talking about doing something musical and we thought given the nature of the story it would be really fun to do something absurd, and prog seemed like the most friendly format.”